Welcome to EXPLORATIONS in VOA
Special English. Today, Mary Tillotson and Steve Ember visit one of
the must unusual national parks in the United States. It is called
the Dry Tortugas National Park. It includes seven very small islands
about two-hundred kilometers southwest of the southern state of
Florida. One of the islands was once a prison. Let us begin our
visit by imagining we are traveling back in time more than
one-hundred years.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

It is the last few days of July in Eighteen-Sixty-Five. The
United States Navy steamship "Florida" moves slowly toward a small
island. Members of the crew tie the ship to the dock. Passengers
begin to leave the ship. They move slowly in the extreme heat of the
summer day. In front of them is a huge red brick building.

The passengers walk over a small wooden bridge. It crosses an
area of water that circles the huge building. They move slowly to
the only door. They pass through the door and stop in front of a
group of soldiers.

VOICE TWO:

An officer among the soldiers comes forward and tells the ship's
passengers to stop. He looks at the passengers and says, "You are
now within the walls of the Fort Jefferson Military Prison in the
Dry Tortugas. You have been tried, convicted and sentenced to serve
your punishment here.

"No prisoner has ever successfully escaped from Fort Jefferson.
No one will ever escape. It is more than two-hundred kilometers
across open ocean to the nearest occupied land."

VOICE ONE:

Four of the prisoners that arrived that long ago day had been
found guilty of taking part in the successful plot to murder the
President of the United States…Abraham Lincoln.

Samuel
Mudd.

One of the prisoners was sentenced
for giving medical aid to the man who killed President Lincoln. He
was also found guilty of being an active member of the plot. That
man was Samuel Mudd. He was a thirty-two year old doctor from the
eastern state of Maryland. He had been sentenced to spend the rest
of his life doing hard labor at Fort Jefferson.

VOICE TWO

The huge red brick building that faced Doctor Mudd and the other
prisoners had six sides. It took up most of the land area of the
small island. The six wide walls surrounded a large area of open
space in the center.

Each wall was about fifteen meters tall. Inside the walls were
hundreds of rooms. Most of them held huge guns that pointed out to
sea. Many other buildings were also inside the huge fort. Soldiers
slept in them. Some of the houses were used by the officers.

Soldiers and prisoners worked and lived within the walls of the
fort. The extreme heat affected them all.

Hundreds of sea birds flew over the small island. Doctor Mudd
must have believed that those birds would be the only creatures that
would ever escape from Fort Jefferson. He must have believed that
far away island would be his new home for a very long time. But he
was wrong.

VOICE ONE:

Three years later, in Eighteen-Sixty-Seven, Doctor Mudd was
helping the prison doctor treat victims of the disease yellow fever.
Many died. Soon, the prison doctor also lost his own battle with the
disease. Only Doctor Mudd was left to treat the increasing number of
men who became sick with Yellow Fever.

Later, the sickness seemed to leave the island. Many of those who
survived knew they owned their lives to Doctor Mudd. Almost every
man in Fort Jefferson wrote to the President of the United States
asking that Doctor Mudd be pardoned because of his work treating
patients who had Yellow Fever. They said Doctor Mudd was a hero.

In February Eighteen-Sixty-Nine, President Andrew Johnson signed
a presidential pardon. Doctor Mudd was a free man. He left Fort
Jefferson and returned to his home in the state of Maryland. He once
again became a family doctor.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The first European visitor to the small islands was the Spanish
explorer, Ponce de Leon. He arrived in Fifteen-Thirteen. Ponce de
Leon was an older man who was searching for special water that
stories said would make him young again. It was called the "Fountain
of Youth."

Ponce de Leon named the little islands the Tortugas. Tortugas is
the Spanish word for the sea creature called a turtle. Thousands of
them lived on the islands. Ponce de Leon was able to capture many to
provide fresh meat for his ship's crew. He never did find the
special water of the Fountain of Youth.

In fact, the little islands had no water at all. The Tortugas
were dry. The word "dry" began to appear on early maps of the area
to warn ships they could find no fresh water there.

VOICE ONE:

President Thomas Jefferson took an interest in the little islands
as a place that could help protect ships traveling in a large area
of water called the Florida Straits. He proposed a military base be
built there. In Eighteen-Twenty-One, the United States took control
of Florida and its islands. The military fort was not begun until
Eighteen-Forty-Eight, long after Jefferson's death.

The fort was to be the home of one-thousand-five-hundred men and
four-hundred-fifty huge cannon. It would become the largest American
fort made of brick building material.

VOICE TWO:

Fort
Jefferson from the air. The giant fort was never
completed.

Fort Jefferson was never really
completed. It had to be worked on continually. The salt air, wind,
water and sand quickly caused problems. The weight of the brick
walls made then sink into the sand.

It was difficult to keep the fort in good repair. As workers
built new parts of the fort, others worked at repairing damage
caused by the environment.

Slaves and prisoners did the building and repair work at the
fort. Most of the prisoners were army troops. They had been found
guilty of some crime and ordered to serve their sentences at Fort
Jefferson.

In Eighteen Seventy-Four, the American army left Fort Jefferson.
Modern artillery made the fort no longer useful.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Last year, almost one-hundred thousand people made the long trip
to visit the Dry Tortugas National Park. Soldiers no longer greet
them when they arrive at Fort Jefferson. Friendly members of the
National Park Service do. They meet every boat filled with visitors.
They smile and say, "Welcome to Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas
National Park."

The small island's days as a prison are long past. Yet almost
every visitor to the Dry Tortugas National Park asks about its most
famous prisoner, Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd. They ask to see his
room. Most people know that Doctor Mudd did not end his life in the
Fort Jefferson prison.

VOICE TWO:

Today, the huge prison walls are empty. Only a few of the huge
cannon remain. These have been left to show visitors what the old
fort looked like.

The weather continues to affect the fort's buildings and grounds.
So Park Service workers continue the fight against the severe
environmental damage.

VOICE ONE:

The Park extends over an area of more than twenty-six-thousand
hectares. Almost all of this is ocean water and living coral reefs
that protect the little islands.

Thousands of different kinds of fish live in the waters near the
islands. Many ships have sunk in those waters over the past several
hundred years. Many are inside the area that is part of the national
park. The wrecks of these ships help provide safe places for many of
the fish.

Some visitors are lucky enough to see the huge sea turtles that
gave the islands their name. The little islands are also home to
many kinds of sea birds. Visitors are not permitted on some of the
islands in the Dry Tortugas National Park because they would
frighten birds that are laying eggs.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

When Fort Jefferson was a prison, a sign was placed on the wall
for new prisoners to see. It said, "Thee Who Enter Here Leave Hope
Behind." Few prisoners except for Doctor Mudd had any hope of ever
leaving there.

Today the sad old fort and empty little islands provide a
protected home for thousands of birds, fish and turtles. Visitors
travel for hours on high-speed boats that bring them from the island
of Key West, Florida. They swim in the warm waters and enjoy the
bright sun. Many explore the underwater shipwrecks. Still others
bring temporary cloth shelters and spend a few days living on the
white sand beaches.

The striking natural beauty of the island today seems to clash
with its earlier history as a lonely, inescapable prison. Doctor
Mudd surely would approve of the change.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

This Special English program was written by Paul Thompson and
produced by George Grow. Our studio engineer was Wayne Shorter. This
is Mary Tillotson.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another
EXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.